First ER Trip

Friday was my first official neurotic new mom (possible over-reaction) incident. There's a little back story that makes it seem a little more logical than it first appears. One of my friends from school is moving to Arizona to go to law school so I organized a happy hour of all the original Strattonites that used to go out nearly every Friday night (we missed you Sheryl). Of course, this included Wes so after school he went and got Finn and stopped by to meet us for a little while downtown. It was a beautiful afternoon, although a little warm and a tad bit humid, so we decided to sit outside. When they arrived Finn was very warm and pretty lethargic. We just assumed he was hot and tired. He pretty much just laid on us and slept off and on. At one point he was lifting his head and dropping it back on my chest over and over like he couldn't hold it up. I got a little worried and took him inside to the air conditioning and wet his hair down. Once inside he perked up a little so Wes decided to just take him home and turn the air on. Wes said that he was pretty much back to his old self when they got home, although he wouldn't eat any of his cereal. I got home at about 7:45 and noticed that he was still really warm so we took his temperature. It was 101.4. I knew that anything over 100.4 is reason to call the doctor so we called the answering service. Unfortunately, they had just given the doctor all the messages and wouldn't be calling her back for another hour. Here's where the new mom neurosis kicks in. At this point I knew that he had had a fever for at least 4-5 hours. I really didn't want to wait another hour to find out whether or not we should go in to the ER and then sit around the ER for who knows how long. Had I discovered the fever earlier, I would have given Finn Tylenol and waited to see if he got better, but 5 hours into it I just decided we should go to the ER (Prompt Care closes at 8). So off we went...

When we got there, after a short wait, they took Finn's temp and it was 101.6. I half expected them to send us home, but they took us back and gave Finn something to treat the fever. The fever seemed to break after about an hour and Finn was much more himself. They took his temp again and he was down to 100.6. They also took a throat culture because his throat seemed red. About four hours after we arrived, they sent us home and told us to give him a rotation of Tylenol and Motrin every 4 hours. They didn't find a source for the fever. The Tylenol and Motrin helped, but he has still had a slight fever off and on all weekend. He's also been a bit crabby. I still can't feel any teeth so I guess we'll see in the next week or two if I dragged Finn to the ER over his first tooth. :) Here's a couple pics we took on my phone while waiting in the ER.

Who looks tired?

Sidenotes: A nurse gave us the blanket in the pic with Wes. Apparently, volunteers make them for babies who come to the hospital. We left the house with nothing but Finn and my purse. No diapers, no blanket, nothing.

Also, we were in an area right next to a door that connects the ER to another department and nearly every time someone walked through it, an alarm went off until someone came with a card to turn it off. So on top of sitting in the ER for 4 hours, we had to listen to an alarm constantly ringing.